Halloween Black Ice Cream

Los Angeles and its people are no strangers to delectable food, eye-pleasing pictures, or the two of them combined. Maybe that is why Melrose Avenue in Hollywood is such a popular place for tourists and locals alike, with the numerous murals that you can take pictures at and the various restaurants, dessert shops, and coffeehouses that can satisfy any of your cravings. Placed among the many food establishments on the avenue, you can find Cold Rolled Ice Cream Company.

From the outside, Cold Rolled Ice Cream Company might seem modest and subtle, with its elegant exterior and muted color scheme. However, the moment you step inside, you will be greeted with a chic, clean interior that definitely has a place in your Instagram feed. And, on top of the white-marble counter, you can see the magic in the making of the namesake item of the establishment: cold-rolled ice cream. Taking advantage of the fact that it’s always summer in LA, the Company provides a wide selection of ice cream flavors, from matcha green tea to butter pecan, and an even more abundant choices of toppings, like fruits and cheesecake bites, that customers can mix and match themselves, allowing for hundreds of personalized combinations. If that does not sound special, that is because the method of the ice cream-making has not been described yet.

The Company specializes in Thai-rolled ice cream creations: a pitcher of customer-choice ice cream base and flavor is poured onto a cold metal surface, on where the cream is folded and kneaded several times to reach the right consistency and temperature before being spread into a layer of creamy delicacy. One sweet gesture that stood out is how the staff writes the customer’s name in sweet sauce on the ice cream, which further gives a personalized feel to the creation. The ice cream is then scraped and, you guessed it, rolled into several stubby sticks. After transferring the rolls to a paper cup, the ice cream is decorated with the selected toppings and ready to be enjoyed. Just for the week before Halloween, Cold Rolled Ice Cream Company worked with Off The Menu Club to bring a secret item for our members: Halloween Black Ice Cream, topped with whipped cream, Oreo cookies, and candy corns.

What is the story behind Cold Rolled Ice Cream Company?

Our founders are four ice cream connoisseurs. We traveled the world together as friends, tasting and sampling various ice cream creations the world has to provide. We discovered the rolled ice cream in Thailand, and it was just amazing. We just fell in love with the technique used to make it, and so we brought it back to the states and opened our first shop here in August 2017.

What do you use to color and flavor the Halloween Black Ice Cream?

So the black color comes from edible charcoal, which adds a tiny bit of a crunch but does not really add any flavor. The ice cream itself is our Toasted Coconut ice cream. The creation looks unique and everybody goes crazy over it and puts it on Instagram. It’s just a cool creation and everybody seems to love it.

We heard you release a new menu every month. Where do you usually get your inspiration from?

We usually get a group of people together once a month—just a bunch of friends—and we sit down and have a couple of beers, and people just come up with different flavors and topping combinations that we wind up trying that work really well together. We always want to keep it unique and do something no one else is doing.

What is your favorite flavor so far?

My personal favorite is Pistachio, but I see the Strawberry Cheesecake and Oreos & Cream ice cream are our number one best-sellers; they are just really popular.

Do you have any non-dairy ice cream bases? What options do you offer?

We do! We have two: coconut milk and almond milk bases. Anyone of our menu can be created with these as their base, and anybody that comes in that wants their food to be non-dairy is always amazed by the number of different combinations that they can have with those two bases.